Posts Tagged: "patent"

EDITOR’S NOTE: What follows is a summary of the Goodlatte patent bill created by American Continental Group, which is a government affairs and strategic consulting firm in Washington, DC. Manus Cooney, a former Chief Counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee is one of the partners at ACG, and is also frequent guest contributor on IPWatchdog.com. Cooney and his partners and associates worked to prepare this summary, which was described as a team effort. It is republished here with permission.

Universal Electronics sues Peel Technologies over remote control patents —– GigOptix and MACOM settle patent infringement and trade secret/employment disputes —– Nintendo prevails at ITC on Wii patent infringement complaint —– E-commerce video technology at center of patent infringement lawsuit —– MGT Capital asserts newly granted patent in infringement lawsuit —– Blonder Tongue prevails over K Tech on Summary Judgment —– OurPet’s files patent infringement lawsuit against Go Fetch —– Freescale settles with Tessera

With the FTC taking this step now I don’t know how Congress can move forward with patent reform legislation that purports to address the so-called patent troll problem. Perhaps they will move forward, but at a time when the Congress has so many issues to deal with is patent reform prior to yet another in-depth government report really where times should be spent? As of the writing of this article we do not have a budget for FY 2014, or even a continuing resolution and the debt ceiling debate looms in the backdrop. Perhaps Congress and the FTC should be spending time fixing other problems rather than tinkering with an issue the GAO says doesn’t need to be fixed.

Many of you are privy to the problem of excessive patents. You have all seen the articles about yet another cellphone company infringing on yet another patent, but what you’re left with are questions of what all this activity means and how to use that information to act in your best interest– whether you are the CEO of a company…

There are many different reasons why building a better mouse-trap is only the first of many steps on the road to financial freedom. First, there is no guarantee of financial success given by any patent office in the world. This is true even if you have a strong patent that covers a great product that enjoys robust consumer demand. Unfortunately, many inventors operate under the misunderstanding that getting a patent is like owning Boardwalk and Park Place in the popular board game MONOPOLY. The truth is that turning an invention into cash is much more complicated than simply placing hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place. Yes, a patent is an essential ingredient because without one you have no right to exclude competitors from engaging in competitive activities, but you must treat inventing as a business if you want to truly be successful.

Clouding IP Faces Inter Partes Review at the USPTO. ***** Goodlatte’s Second “Discussion Draft” of Patent Reform Legislation. ***** IPO White Paper Calls for Update to Patent Examination System. ***** The After Final Consideration Pilot 2.0 (AFCP 2.0), which had been scheduled to expire on September 30, 2013, has been extended through December 14, 2013. ***** Patent Litigator Becomes Managing Partner at Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton. ***** The requirement for consonance applies to both the patent challenged for double patenting (i.e., the challenged patent) and the patent being used as a reference against the challenged patent (i.e., the reference patent).

Prior to the merger, GlobalOptions Group provided risk mitigation and management services, including forensic DNA analysis, proprietary DNA collection products, and related research services to law enforcement agencies, federal and state governments, crime laboratories and disaster management organizations. Thus, this merger seems in some ways to be a backdoor way for Walker Digital to obtain a ticker symbol for trading purposes.

In recent years the registration exam to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office has undergone significant change… There will be yet another update to the USPTO registration exam at the end of January 2014. The updated examination will additionally cover: (1) First-Inventor-to-File Final Rules; (2) Patent Law Treaties Implementation Act of 2012; and (3) Changes to Representation of Others Before the USPTO Final Rules. Thus, the exam that will be given beginning on or about January 21, 2014, will be substantially different than the examination given at the beginning of April 2011.

It’s amazing how fast a successful product is counterfeited and how brazen the copying is. The figure above illustrates what counterfeiting looks like. Counterfeiters copy everything….except price and quality. They copy the shape, the color, and the style of the product. They copy the images straight from your Kickstarter campaign. They copy the packaging you designed and the name you developed. They cut your price anywhere from 10% to 1,000%. Their quality is at best sub-standard and at worst dangerously defective. I’ve personally purchased counterfeits that have broken on first use and I’ve read reports of counterfeits catching on fire when plugged in.

Social media websites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, have changed the manner that businesses communicate and market their products and innovations. Although these tools may be beneficial by creating market “buzz” for new products through rapid information sharing, they may also be detrimental to a company’s patenting practices for the same reason. If disclosures of up and coming products are made on social media websites without the company first filing for patent protection, and the disclosures are then copied by a second party who then files an application based on the company’s social media disclosures, before the company does, then the first-to-file law could bar the company from patenting the invention, whereas the second party could then obtain patent rights to the invention disclosed on the social media site.

One patent application we explore in-depth is for a recommendation service that improves the ability of users to browse through application stores quickly. This system takes recommendations from other expert application users within a user’s social circles and implements that information when a user searches for mobile programs. Other interesting applications include a few electronic device improvements, including a rotatable kickstand, and some innovations regarding user interfaces, including the ability for a touchscreen to discriminate between touch inputs from multiple users. A number of issued patents also stick out as interesting developments from Microsoft. A couple of patents protect improvements to entertainment systems created by Microsoft, including a better system for matching XBox players by ranking and a messaging system for notifying television viewers of programs that they might want to watch. Another patent makes it easier for advertisers to create ads for multiple platforms from a single template.

It is possible to succeed even starting with a limited budget, but you really do need to plan ahead and develop a strategy that makes sense within your resources and one that doesn’t invest unnecessarily or recklessly. This conserves resources in a responsible way, while still laying the ground work for obtaining the benefits and protections offered by the patent laws. The nightmare scenario you need to avoid is spending to much on any one invention that winds up going nowhere. If this happens you not only lose what you invested, but you also potentially lose valuable funds that could be used to pursue the next great idea you have. Over the years as I have worked with inventors and musicians what I have learned is that creative people are rarely, if ever, only going to create once.

The medical research university is heavily involved with developments for medical diagnostics, as many of the following applications show. One patent application describes a system of searching for similar images within a medical imaging database to aid in diagnosing issues. Another patent application would protect a system of developing a personalized library of tumor development indicators for cancer patients to determine if a cancer recurrence is forming. A third application discusses a method of analyzing albumin/peptide compounds in a patient’s plasma to determine if a blood flow issue exists. Other patent applications we feature here focus on improvements to surgical procedures. One patent application explains a new development for specialized surgical robotics and an improved interface for surgeon control. Finally, we feature a patent application discussing a minimally invasive surgical treatment for obesity using a gastric sponge.

A preissuance submission may be made in any non-provisional utility, design, and plant application, as well as in any continuing application. It is worth specifically noting that preissuance submissions may be made regardless of when the underlying application was originally filed. Thus, a third-party preissuance submission can be made in any application filed on, before or after September 16, 2012. A third-party preissuance submission must include a concise description of the asserted relevance of each document submitted, and must be submitted within a certain statutorily specified time period. If a non-compliant submission is presented the Office will not set a time period for a third party to file a corrected third-party submission. Additionally, the Office will not accept amendments to non-compliant submissions that were previously filed. Instead, a third party who previously filed a non-compliant submission may file another complete submission, provided the statutory time period for filing a submission has not closed. In other words, the filing of a non-compliant submission will not toll the statutory time period to file.

Not every claimed invention will be able to be re-patented, but there will undoubtedly be some that will be able to be re-patented. This is possible thanks to 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C). So, if a patent or published patent application is commonly owned it may not be considered prior art against an identical set of claims in a subsequently filed patent application. Of course, 102(b)(2)(C) does not eliminate prior art that qualifies under 102(a)(1), but 102(a)(2) makes the patent application prior art as of its effective filing date of the claimed invention. So if you keep your invention secret and file a patent application it will be secret (and not prior art) up until the application publishes 18 months after filing. If you then re-file a second application with identical claims before publication of the first application there would be no 102(a)(1) prohibition. 102(a)(2) would make that first filing prior art as of its effective filing date, but if you remove 102(a)(2) through common ownership then a common owner would be able to effectively extend their patent term by up to 18 months; longer if publication doesn’t occur at 18 months.